By LAURA LOREK
Publisher of Silicon Hills News

Opcity’s new headquarters at 6800 Burleson Road

Opcity’s staff moved this week into new headquarters at the Bergstrom Tech Center in Southeast Austin.

The high-tech company occupies 50,000 square feet in Building 312, a two-story, glass and brick building built in 1985 for Lockheed Martin.

“We wanted a big home for our headquarters,” said Ben Rubenstein, Opcity’s co-founder, and CEO. ” We have been growing incredibly fast and having a centralized place where we can have our culture and really showcase our culture was really important to us and commutability as well.”

Opcity plotted where all its employees lived on a map and wanted to understand how long it took them to get to work, Rubenstein said.

“Getting downtown was super congested and parking was really hard,” Rubenstein said.

Opcity’s new building boasts lots of natural light and high ceilings and hundreds of free parking places, something that became a big issue for Opcity at its former downtown headquarters at 200 W Cesar Chavez. The company had to lease parking spaces from the Austin American Statesman, several blocks away so its employees could have a place to park downtown.

In May, Opcity, which has created data and analytics-driven technology platform for real estate agents and brokers, officially launched with the announcement of its $27 million Series A funding. Since then, the company has gone from 100 employees to 225 employees. It expects to more than double in the next year and has an option to lease another 50,000 square feet at its new headquarters, Rubenstein said. Opcity is hiring for “pretty much everything” including engineers, product, marketing, finance, accounting, customer service representatives, sales representatives, Rubenstein said.

Opcity is in 30 states right now and plans to be in all 50 by early 2018, Rubenstein said.

“This is actually our fifth office in two years,” said Michael Lam, Opcity co-founder, and chief financial officer. The company started in Rubenstein’s house and they worked out of Galvanize for awhile too.

“We have a model that better aligns to what brokers and agents are looking for,” Lam said.

Opcity makes a technology platform that matches home buyers and home sellers with the best real estate agents in their neighborhoods with no upfront costs. The company uses proprietary data and applied analytics to increase sales.

In addition, the company has gone from 350 broker partners to 1,000 and from 4,000 real estate agents to 13,000 real estate agents.

“Our matching algorithm has done a great job at connecting the right consumer to the right agent at the right time,” Rubenstein said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Opcity held an official opening event with members of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, Austin Community College and the Central Texas Food Bank.

Opcity’s new headquarters include an onsite gym with showers, a patio for work, relaxation and gatherings, a courtyard with ping-pong and other games, an onsite disc golf course and it also includes free lunch for all employees.

“Company culture is a top priority at Opcity,” Jill Dwyer, Opcity’s head of culture, said in a news release. “With a track record of building award-winning office cultures, it’s clear Opcity’s executive leadership kept its employees in mind throughout the new headquarters’ design and development phases.”

Opcity is Rubenstein ‘s second startup. He co-founded Yodle, which Web.com acquired in 2016 for $342 million.